In his attempt to conquer the western world in 218 B.C.E.,
Carthaginian general Hannibal famously lost all but one of his
elephants while crossing the Alps. A new study may explain why:
Elephants just don't dig climbing.

It may not be much of a surprise that elephants aren't mountaineers.
They weigh an average of 5000 kilograms, after all. And anecdotal
evidence suggests that the pachyderms avoid hills when they migrate.
So Iain Douglas-Hamilton, a geologist and chief executive of the Save
the Elephants charity based in Nairobi, Kenya, decided to spy on a
group of elephants in Northern Kenya. Over 2 years, Douglas-Hamilton
and colleagues tracked 60 elephants with global positioning technology.

By plotting the routes on topographical maps, they learned that the
pachyderms consistently avoided all slopes with inclines over 43
degrees...